Left vs. Right ~ Outside the Margins with Andrew Q Gordon

I don’t have an aversion to Cons—well not really—but I don’t go to many. It’s not that I enjoy them, but while I’m not an introvert, I’m almost certainly not an extrovert either. This is a left brain/right brain kinda issue. On the one hand I want to go, meet people, schmooze and talk about my creative genius (or at least pretend that I have that.) But my practical side starts to do a cost benefit analysis and tries to calculate my return on investment (ROI).

By practical measures, Cons are a lousy financial ‘investment.’ In the age of social media you can reach far more people on line than at a Con. For the cost of one Con, you could spend $5.00 a day on Facebook ads and reach 100 times the number of people.

Of course, not all interactions can be reduced to dollars, pounds or euros. Despite the hype, social media can’t replace face-to-face meetings. You can’t get a hug on line. People can’t thumb through your books on their iPad or Kindle. It’s much harder to tell if someone has tuned you out or is hanging on your every word in a chat box. For that you need to meet people in person.

As with most things, there needs to be a balance between the left and right side—a meeting of the minds. (Okay, go ahead and groan, you have my permission.) As a relatively new author, with a limited following, with a small marketing budget, cost effectiveness is an issue. There needs to be a measurable ROI. That means, not choosing poorly, like Donovan did in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

Since I mostly write LGBTQ fantasy, MM Romance (or any romance for that matter) isn’t a great fit. A Science Fiction/Fantasy/Speculative Fiction con would be good and an LGBTQ one would be ideal. Enter Nijicon.

Nijicon is—well here is what they say about themselves:

Nijicon is a convention that is for all fans of male/male romance and other LGBTQ representations in various media, regardless of your own gender, sexual identity, ethnicity, etc.

The Con has a strong Yaoi, Speculative Fiction presence and it’s held in the Philadelphia area—driving distance for me. Sounds like a … meeting of the minds.

If you’re in the Philly area and are looking for a speculative fiction event that is for the LGBTQ community, (or you’re dying to meet me) I’ll be manning the Dreamspinner Press table with the wonderful Carole Cummings (hey if you’d rather meet her than me, still come to the Con, I’ll get coffee or something while you two chat). And, lest you think I forgot, the convention is next weekend – Oct 22 & 23.

I just love it when the left and right come together. Makes me feel like this:

And you thought I was going to talk about the U.S. Presidential Election, didn’t you?

~Andrew Q Gordon

About Andrew Q Gordon

Enjoy The Journey![/caption]

Andrew Q. Gordon wrote his first story back when yellow legal pads, ball point pens were common and a Smith Corona correctable typewriter was considered high tech. Adapting with technology, he now takes his MacBook somewhere quiet when he wants to write.

He currently lives in the Washington, D.C. area with his partner of twenty years, their young daughter and dog. In addition to dodging some very self-important D.C. ‘insiders’, Andrew uses his commute to catch up on his reading. When not working or writing, he enjoys soccer, high fantasy, baseball and seeing how much coffee he can drink in a day.

Farewell Giveaway
I have a number of paperbacks, most of which are signed, to giveaway. Over the between now (11 Mar 2017) and 31 Mar 2017, every comment on the blog (this post and all other new posts), will be entered to win 1 of these paperbacks. There are also some misc swag items, so there will be a few packs of these to give away as well.

Thank you so much for your support over the last 4 years. Prism will be closing its doors on 1 April 2017. All content will remain available, but no new content will appear after 31 Mar 2017. As such all request forms have been turned off. Again Thank you,

I love what you have to say. I’ve only been to Saints and Sinners, which is geared more to authors, and Queermance in Melbourne.

For me it’s hard as all the main ones are in the US, definitely more than driving distance for me. And yet I know how important it is for building an audience, while getting perspective on where you sit in the scheme of things.